21 October 2007

U.S. forces were about to conduct an early-morning raid today in Sadr City, a poor part of Baghdad, when they found themselves under attack by automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades. They naturally called in air support.

When men are shooting at you from the tops of buildings, alleys and cubbyholes in the neighborhood, it’s hard to know where to shoot back. They can move around easily. You can’t.

Because the Americans were originally in the area to look for a man who might be a “Special Groups” member behind numerous kidnappings in the city, the official U.S. press release following the resulting carnage stated that “49 criminals were killed ...”

Looking to capture one criminal, the three separate air strikes killed at least 49 of them. No mention of the wounded, or the destruction of property. Iraqi officials say women, children and old men are among the dead.

"Criminals?" Women. Children. Doddering old men.

The Americans say, straight-faced, that they weren’t aware of civilians in the area. This beggars belief.

OK. In the twisted, up-is-down funhouse that the once-beautiful city of Baghdad has become over the last four-and-a-half years of war, American forces are calling down air strikes in an impoverished neighborhood where a criminal might be hiding. I’ve no argument that kidnapping isn’t a crime, or that catching someone who plans and executes such crimes should be caught, tried and punished.

And I’ve no argument, either, that in war it isn’t only soldiers who die. In a war such as America is waging on Iraq, the soldiers on one side aren’t fighting uniformed and disciplined enemy soldiers on the other. Instead, they’re fighting local guerrillas who don’t play by the rules, who don’t wear uniforms and who melt into the populace when they’ve achieved their goal or run out of bullets. And shit happens.

This type of war cannot be won by either side. And it’s the civilians who end up bearing the worst if it. Women, children, and elders. Lives are lost or ruined, homes destroyed, livelihoods taken away.

The disingenuous response by America’s military PR hacks that "Ground forces reported they were unaware of any innocent civilians being killed as a result of this operation," is horrifying.

They call in early-morning air strikes where many poor people are living, blow the hell out of the place and claim they “weren’t aware of civilians being killed”? Yet 49 "criminals" died.

"Most of those killed and wounded were women, children and elderly men which shows the indiscriminate monstrosity of the attacks on this crowded area," said Abdul-Mehdi al-Muteyri, an official loyal to Moqtada Sadr. The attack, he said, was “simply barbaric.”

Well, the rhetoric is a little over the top, right? We don’t like Moqtada Sadr. He’s a “radical Shia cleric” and the alleged leader of an army of shadowy guerrillas who have been giving us headaches for years now.

Still, when soldiers are reduced to bombing areas in which they know there are innocent civilians, it’s time to reassess the mission. This type of “battle” has been going on for far too long in Iraq. Saddam is dead. There were no “weapons of mass destruction.” America’s shaky public objectives have been accomplished, whatever that means. But because of us, Iraq is now fighting a civil war, a religious and power-grabbing war. America’s troops are being forced to do the work of policemen – raiding homes in the dark hours before dawn, looking for criminals. Yet when they’re attacked by guerrillas, they behave like the soldiers they are and call in air support to bomb everything. It’s like tossing a hand-grenade into a sweets shop to kill a few annoying wasps.

Really, it has to end before our idiotic gun-barrel democracy wins more hearts and minds.

17 October 2007

According to this little test, I've got a few years left before I move on to the next level. I'm at 61 percent of my total lifespan (I guessed pretty well in the previous post when I said I'm a bit over halfway through) and it pleased me to know that (according to these Harvard experts, at least) I'll live six years longer than the average female lifespan. I wonder what 2040 will be like?

Stuck in a dark frame of mind, I kept thinking about the changes coming for me and other Americans in the years ahead after writing the previous post. So far, how I’ll deal with those changes has been amorphous in my thinking. No one wants to contemplate hard times when the present is already so shaky, and I’m no different. Yet ... yet, am I really being dark, or just pragmatic? It’s time to start thinking about them seriously. It’s time to start getting ready.

As an American, I’ve lived an unbelievably privileged life for almost 51 years. During my childhood and growing up years with my parents, I was never hungry. I never lacked for anything. I went to good schools and had the opportunity to go to college. As an adult, I’ve never been rich, and I’ve lived most of my adult years just barely ahead of the official poverty level. The last ten years were better, as Mr. Wren and I were able to combine our incomes. Still, even when it was the toughest I was able to keep a house over my own and my family’s head, keep us clothed, maintain a car, and keep us well-fed. We never, ever went hungry, as is evidenced by my current fight to shed the too many pounds I carry on my short frame.

At the moment, we’re still OK. We’re making our house payment, and the electricity, propane and water bills get paid each month. We’ve already got our wood for the winter woodstove. The garbage and recycling are picked up at the curb, and we have far more recycling than actual garbage in the bins. We’re still eating well – probably better than we ever have, since we eat very little processed food now. My grocery bills, though, remain about as expensive as ever, even buying mostly fresh vegetables and meat, dried beans and rice. The price of food in general has gone up a lot, so I need to look at what I’m buying even more closely. I can’t imagine anymore stocking my shelves with junk food and Hamburger Helper. I can’t afford it. We rarely eat out.

And yet we still live far better and with far more comfort than most people in the world, and than many people in America.

I can still buy a tank of gas for my car, though it makes me wince every time I do. I’m glad I no longer have that 50-mile commute each day to work and back again. Increasingly it becomes clear that when I do finally find a job, it won’t be down in the city, but much closer to home. It will have to be. That means I won’t make the same salary as I did before, which is disturbing, as it wasn’t much even then.

So we’ll have to learn to make better use of what we have. I mentioned our cottage garden in the previous post. This summer we didn’t get much produce from it. I didn’t work out there among the plants at all, and Mr. Wren wasn’t able to do very much himself, even though he loves it. Next season, I’ll have to, which means I need to get out there and start preparing the gardens for a new “crop” now. We’ll have to be smart about what we plant, and even smarter about what we do with the harvest next fall. I’ll need to learn some new skills, like canning and dehydrating, and be serious about using them. I’ll have to pay attention to my neighbors, several of whom are quite elderly, or who are young and have growing children. They may need some help.

We have five chickens, all hens. They produce many more big, delicious, brown-shelled eggs than the two of us can eat, so the extra dozen or two they lay each week through the spring and summer we’ve given away to friends and family. The Girls will still produce eggs, even this winter, though only few during the darkest months. Our hens are three years old now, and won’t be producing at this level forever. So I think we may need to consider getting a rooster and allowing a few of the eggs to hatch, so we’ll have more hens. We’ll have to give them more space for laying and for raising chicks. We may need the eggs, and the meat, before long. And I’ll have to grow a spine when it comes to facing down that cantankerous, shin-pecking rooster.

I need to learn to bake bread, and how to make stock out of chicken bones and vegetables rather than opening a convenient can of broth. It’s possible that my daughter and her partner will need to live with us again so we can all pool our meager resources. We’ll need to give up some luxuries. Some of those I can hardly bear to lose – my Internet connection, for one, and Mr. Wren’s cable TV for another. We’ll have to conserve even more than we do now, tighten our belts a few more notches and narrow our world a lot.

My current quest for physical fitness and weight loss has more behind it than mere vanity. Looking good is nice – who wouldn’t like to have a slim, strong body – but there’s more to my thinking than that. I’m going to need to be as fit and strong as I can be as I go into my 51st year. I need to gird my loins. My daily life is going to be more strenuous. And my personal health will have to be as good as I can manage, since the chances of finding a local job that can provide me with co-paid health insurance is just about nil. I have no hope that our government will change that anytime soon.

We’ll probably have to try to sell a lot of “things” we don’t need. We’ll need to trim our lives, cut out the fat. We’ll have to find cheap ways to entertain ourselves. Fortunately, Mr. Wren has always loved cards and board games, and we have a closetful. And I have shelves and shelves of books, old and new, many of which I haven’t read yet. We’ve plenty of ways to have fun once the TV is gone.

And finally, though this may need to come sooner than later, we’ll need to become an active part of our community. In the years before now, we both worked a long commute from home, so we’ve never gotten to know most of our neighbors beyond the nodding point. But I think our community, our little town, is going to have to pull together if we’re all to survive the looming hard times. In the old days, people knew each other; they helped each other. It wasn’t necessarily because they liked each other, but it was necessary for survival. These are relatively new skills for me, and I suspect for most Americans who’ve spent their lives living in suburbia. We haven’t need to know our neighbors well. We had our jobs, our TVs, and our TV dinners, and it seemed like enough.

In many ways these changes aren’t all bad. Americans can use a little more community and a little more compassion for their neighbors. We can stand to drop our selfishness, and open our kitchens to friends who need a hot bowl of soup and kindness. We can share more. We’ll be better people for it. But we’d better not wait long to get started. Change is on the wind, coming whether we’re prepared or not.

It pops into my mind occasionally – even frequently, these days – to wonder what the world will be like 20 years from now. Perhaps it’s my age. I’m solidly in the middle of my life now, perhaps a bit past the center point. And the last 20 years have gone unbelievably fast. But I don’t recall wondering very often what they’d be like when I was 31. I was still young enough to feel immortal, I guess. I was also inexperienced enough to think that my world would remain a pleasant and safe place, world without end, amen. That’s a conceit of the young.

Back then, my daughter was still a tiny sprite, just starting first grade. I was on an adventure, the first of six exciting, endlessly interesting years in Germany behind me. I had a putty-colored, rotary dial European telephone that gave three short, brassy rings when someone called my five-digit telephone number (you have no idea how that delighted me. Go figure). An hour-long phone call home cost about DM100, so we only called once a month. I didn’t have a computer at home, and no-one but some egghead engineer-types working on something strange and futuristic called the Internet had anything even resembling e-mail. Letters took two weeks or more to move between my third-floor flat on Ekleinjartenstrasse and my parents’ ranch-style home in northern California. The Cold War was still cold, but there were changes taking place in faraway Moscow. Terrorism of the European sort was still a threat. The Army guards at the post I worked on used mirrors on sticks to check the undercarriages of every car allowed through the gates. And we still seriously worried about bombers – giant Russian Tupolevs, not the human variety --carrying nukes from Russia to drop on major European cities. Cable TV had been around for less than a decade back in the states, and we didn’t have it in Germany. I watched CNN on Armed Forces Network, which was sprinkled with public service announcements, or German channels, which was a challenge. I was desperately trying to learn German, taking a total immersion course through the local Volkshochschule, struggling along with people from Ghana, Turkey, Italy, and other countries all over the world. We sounded like the UN delegates during potty breaks. I was having a ball.

Those six short years flew by. As you might have noticed, they remain bright and shining in my memory, intensely personal and treasured, memories to back up to like a hearthfire where I can warm myself when I’m feeling chilled by the present.

Like today. I read in the morning headlines Bush has appointed a woman who’s against both abortion and contraception to take charge of the part of the Dept. of Health and Human Services that deals with birth-control. Before working for HHS, Susan Orr was senior director for marriage and family at the Family Research Council, a conservative group created in part by James Dobson that favors abstinence-only education and opposes federal money for contraception. This bodes ill.

I get the feeling that Bush and his nutty right-wing cronies are working as fast as they can to create a theocratic government that will be incredibly hard to change once Bush is out of office. That scares hell out of me. My daughter and my stepdaughter are both of childbearing age, and neither of them are ready or even want to have children of their own just yet. They should have that choice, just like I did. I fear that in a few years, they may not.

They should also have the choice of whether or not to be religious, and the choice of which religion they wish to follow. They should have the right to choose, as I have, not be religious at all. Bush and the fundamentalist right-wing would take away that choice, take away their right to choose whether to bear children, and take away their opportunities for intellectual growth and even personal freedom. What a horror these people are. What a terrible threat they pose to all of us.

The five-year anniversary of the day Congress gave Bush the go-ahead to wage war against Iraq just passed. Our soldiers are still there, caught up in a massive fuck-up of a war that didn’t have to happen, and there is no end in sight. Nearly 4,000 American soldiers have died; many thousands more have come home maimed and broken for life. Tens – even hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens have died or have been ruined for life as well. And there’s no stopping the carnage, it seems. Bush is determined to leave his vanity war for the next president to clean up, if he or she can. There aren’t enough American soldiers there to do the job. They’re still poorly equipped. We’re relying on mercenaries to do the things we haven’t enough soldiers in our volunteer military to do, and the mercenaries are behaving as mercenaries have always behaved in wars, time out of mind, killing indiscriminately and without consequences. In the meantime, America has become a country that tortures people and holds them captive without a fair trial or hope of release. We’ve spent some $460 billion of our national treasure on this war and will have to spend billions more – and a great deal of that money is going to corrupt corporations and individuals rather than for what it was intended to. The Iraqi people lack fresh water, electricity is still intermittent, and they’re starting another harsh winter without adequate food and many, without adequate shelter. This is our fault. Our shame.

Here at home, our government listens to our telephone conversations and looks at our e-mail. Our economy is beginning to suffer as the housing bubble that kept things copacetic for so long deflates. People are losing their jobs, their homes, their chance at a decent life while the rich among us cash in. Many thousands of people have no health insurance for themselves or their children, and Bush is determined not to allow the government to at least provide adequate health care for kids. Our Congress, in spite of last November’s election that put (we hoped) sane adults in charge, hasn’t come through. They’ve been a monstrous disappointment. The war continues. The erosion of our civil rights continues. The destruction of the Constitution and of America herself, continues. And the people who’d like to end the separation of church and state, and turn America into a theocracy, continue to be supported by an administration that is terribly, tragically out of control. We’re not doing a damned thing about it.

Yesterday, the price of oil broke another record high, ending at an almost unbelievable $87 bbl. We’re facing the end of the Oil Era and we haven’t prepared. It hasn’t ended yet, but the cost of energy may soon be beyond the means of the average American citizen. When that happens ... well. It’s hard for me even to imagine, as dependent as we are on our cars to take us 20 miles or 50 miles or more to work each day. The cost of food will rise along with it, as will the cost of electricity. How will people pay their mortgages, their rent, their utilities and for other necessary things without jobs? Where will they go when they lose their homes? What will they do when they can’t work in their own communities because there are no jobs for them? What will they do when they can’t buy food?

People who can’t work can’t pay taxes. How will the government continue to run without funds?

Mr. Wren and I have a little spot of land, enough for a cottage garden. Properly cared for, carefully nurtured, we might produce enough for ourselves and one other family. More, if we extend it. We have a few chickens for the luxury of fresh laid eggs. We have a conventional mortgage, thank goodness. I was wary of ARMs and said no when the broker offered us that wonderful deal – it seemed to me that while interest rates were low at the time we purchased our house (1997), they could always go up, like they always do eventually. I didn’t want to get stuck with a house payment that suddenly shot skyward because I was conned into magical thinking. I’m glad I did my homework, particularly since Mr. Wren has since become disabled and is unable to work. But I’m still unemployed too, right now. While we’re managing each month, that has to change soon. What happens if I can’t find work and my meager nest egg is gone? How do I help my kids, who will be facing problems just as serious as my own?

I’m not sure what the future holds. What I am sure of is that it won’t be like the last 20 years have been. And that makes me sad for the young people who have just reached their most productive years as adults, a time when they’re still full of energy, hope for their futures and that heady sense of immortality. And their children. Oh, my, the children.

I have hope, still. I hope that a level-headed, sane adult wins the next presidential election. Whoever that person is won’t be able to fix things quickly, though. We have many years – perhaps 20 more, or 40 more, or 50 – ahead during which life will be much different, and much harder, for most Americans thanks to Bush and his minions. Some of the changes put in place by the Bush administration may remain in place. If there’s another Republican president, we can be assured those changes will be permanent and that our lives will continue to get even worse.

So I wonder what my life will be like 20 years from now, assuming I live that long. I wonder how it will be for my daughters, and their children, if they have them. I hope things get better, but experience shows me that they just might not. We’ll see.

15 October 2007

The Carpetbagger Report offered a thought-provoking post today, inspired by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman’s column, “Gore Derangement Syndrome.” Both pieces are well worth reading. I left the following comment at the Carpetbagger site:

“It gives me hope that Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to wake up the world -- and Americans in particular -- about the threat and looming disaster of global warming. It further gives me hope that the committee had the wisdom to recognize that global warming will, indeed, bring terrible violence and unrest to the world when the climate starts having a large effect on the global economy. I read Mr. Gore's first book, "Earth In The Balance" back in the 80s, when he was still a senator and the vice presidency was still in his future. I was impressed then, and I've been impressed ever since. I voted for him with Bill Clinton both times, and both times I wished their roles were reversed. When he ran in 2000 for the presidency, I was glad -- Mr. Gore has vision, experience and pragmatism, and he isn't out for self-aggrandizement or motivated by greed. Of course, we all know how the elections turned out. The man who stole the 2000 presidency is a horror and Mr. Gore's evil doppelganger.

“The Nobel committee did the right thing. The right-wingers still hate Mr. Gore because he's right and he advocates necessary change they don't want to admit or face. That change -- addressing global warming, negotiating rather than dropping bombs, making sure that people have adequate health care rather than making sure that Big Pharma and the insurance industry rakes in their billions, and finding workable alternative sources of energy rather than allowing the oil barons to enrich themselves at the world's expense -- means that they might have to give up their goodies. They're selfish and self-absorbed and sadly, self-deluded.

“Why am I hopeful? That Mr. Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize means that the world will change in spite of them. I just hope it doesn't happen too late. And yes, I'm just idealistic enough to hope that Mr. Gore will run for president again in 2008. I think he might surprise everyone when the right-winger's poo-flinging fest leaves them stinking instead of him, and he wins.”

The comment that appeared right after mine, written by reader hark (Comment #35), is also thought-provoking:

“It was a good, provocative column by Paul Krugman today, as so many of his are, but it misses the mark. It’s not just Al Gore, or just Gore Derangement Syndrome. It’s blind hatred by many on the right toward liberalism in general, and its leaders and messengers specifically. They hate Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton every bit as much as Al Gore. It’s blind patriotism and militarism and Christian fundamentalism and American imperialism and economic greed and ethnic bigotry gone wild and crazy. It’s like a stampede of pure, raw hatred sweeping across our country and trampling it to smithereens. They hate all things liberal with a passion that is breathtaking and limitless and terrifying.

“It’s horrible to watch, and completely dispiriting. And I don’t know what the solution is.”

It does, indeed, seem like America has been swept by hatred and fear. Perhaps it rises from a longing for a simpler world, for times that didn’t seem so fraught with anxiety and greed. But that world never did really exist except for in our imaginations. People have always had to face troubles, even if they consisted only of filling their bellies each day – and of course, there are millions of people all over the world whose lives are that still that “simple.” My bet is that they’d trade three squares for their hunger anytime.

Hatred, fear and greed: These are what move America today and, I’m afraid, what will continue to move us in the near future. But I do believe that Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize win heralds a shift in the wind. Maybe there’s still hope for us.

11 October 2007

Some interesting observations: After about ten weeks of walking four days a week, my clothes are getting too loose. There are ... muscles in my thighs that I couldn't feel before. My calves are ... tight. I feel good. No time to write right now, but I will. This is ... new.

10 October 2007

07 October 2007

One of the blogs that I can’t help but read each week is Clusterfuck Nation by James Kunstler, a journalist and one-time reporter with the Rolling Stone, the author of The Long Emergency, The Geography of Nowhere,and many other books and magazine articles. He's also a public speaker.

The name of his blog disturbs me, since I’m one of those people whose brain works best on images, and the image of a clusterfuck ... well. But Kunstler’s choice of a name for his rants is right on the money, even if it makes me grimace.

And so I read his weblog.

I read even though it hurts. When I read Kunstler’s words, there’s a part of me that gets a vicarious thrill, I have to admit. I feel like a rubbernecker at a particularly gruesome accident, or like someone who mindlessly eats hot buttered popcorn through the chainsaw scenes as blood spatters the walls. Yet Kunstler isn’t writing about serial killers or gory murders; he’s not writing about terrible industrial accidents or genocidal wars.

He’s writing about us. About you and me, and our America. About how tragically spoiled we are and how the whole thing is running headlong toward a cliff. He doesn’t leave himself out of the mix, either – he acknowledges that he’s just as spoiled as the rest of us and just as dependent on the very things he rants against. The difference is that he knows it. And he wants us to know it too, and to join him in trying to change it. His sincerity is so ferocious that it is sometimes almost off-putting.

Sometimes. Almost. Not enough to stop me reading his blog, though, or to stop me from pondering his arguments. Or to keep me from urging you to read what he has to say, too.

Here’s what Kunstler says, though he says it far better than I can: The world is approaching or has passed a period he calls “peak oil,” meaning that all the world’s oil that has been found and tapped over the last 40 years is on the downhill side of supply. New oil sources cannot make up for that shortfall. In the meantime, world demand for the oil continues to rise. Oil has now topped out at $80/barrel, and while at the moment most Americans are still paying just under $3 a gallon for gasoline, that cannot continue forever. The price of oil will never drop appreciably. The oil we use cannot really be replaced.

Kunstler argues that this means that for many Americans, the long daily commute from the wilderness of the suburbs to the job will soon become exceedingly expensive and eventually, impossible. It will also mean that the manufacturing and transport of goods – groceries, dry goods, electronics – will become more expensive, and that increased cost will show up in the prices we pay for them. Many Americans will find themselves in large, inefficient homes they cannot afford to heat with oil or natural gas, another energy source that is becoming more scarce and thus, more expensive.

The picture Kunstler draws is, like the name of his blog, disturbing on a fundamental level. Agree or disagree with him, what he writes compels the imagination. What do we do, one wonders, if we can’t afford gasoline for the commute to a job that earns our income? What do we do when we can’t afford to keep the heat on through the winter, or the air conditioning running during the hottest days of the summer? What do we do when we lose our jobs because we can’t afford to get to them? What will we do when we can no longer afford to buy groceries, or even the gas we need to take us the impossibly long 10 miles to the nearest grocery store? What will we do when we get there, only to find the shelves unstocked because the trucking company that delivers the goods has gone bankrupt?

It’s a frightening vision. Kunstler doesn’t leave us dangling over the abyss, however. He has some suggestions for ways around the problem. They won’t be easy, or cheap, and waiting only makes them harder and more expensive. But he’s right. His solutions? Rebuild the country’s network of rails and add to them, so that trains can replace cars. Use airlines only for very long distance travel.

That’s one part of the solution. It’s huge all by itself. There’s more. He suggests that all of us are going to have to find ways to earn our livings closer to home, within our own communities, and the sooner we do so, the better. This will also be very difficult. In my own community, I’d have to say that there isn’t enough industry of any kind to support everyone who lives here – at least, not to the standard of living we’ve all become accustomed to. We’d have to lower our expectations rather a lot. At the same time, the cost of living would need to drop, too, including the price of our rents and mortgages.

This is also huge. If our communities can’t employ us, we’ll have to move.

Kunstler says we’ll need to learn how to make our communities more self-sufficient, too, and we’ll need to become much closer to one another. We’ll have to work together. The young people coming up now need to learn how to do things in the old ways. Those of us who are older, who’ve learned how to do some of that out of nostalgia or as hobbies – the backyard veggie garden and keeping chickens comes to mind – will need to teach what we’ve learned, and even become better at it. We’ll have to come up with local work that can support us. We’ll have to help each other. We’ll have to get to know our neighbors.

It may well be impossible. Certainly, the end of our oil-driven lifestyle is almost inconceivable. And yet Kunstler argues compellingly that it’s coming. He doesn’t believe that any alternative energy we might come up with will help, at least not for long, as long as we continue to rely on our cars and roads for our way of life. He says the end of this cushy, comfy life that most of us in America live is coming to an end, and we can count the time it will last in drops of oil.

Kunstler pulls no punches. Sometimes he makes me wince with his acerbic comments. But his arguments are clear. He makes me think.

And so I’ve added Clusterfuck Nation to the blogroll on the right. Kunstler’s writing is sharp and pointy. It cuts and slices. You walk away licking your wounds, but you’re thinking about what you’ve read. If that’s all his writing accomplishes – that he makes us think enough to take action – then Kunstler may have achieved his objective. He may, with his needle-sharp pen, push us along into a better, and more sustainable world before it’s too late.

He’s also an accomplished artist and has a great eye for both beauty and ugliness. But for goodness sake, don’t pester him!

Update:The painting above is by James Kunstler, titled "Mobile and Mickey (small)". You can see more of his paintings at Clusterfuck Nation.

01 October 2007

Story by Jung of a conversation with a chief of the Pueblo Indians: Jung asked the chief's opinion of the white man and was told that it was not a high one. White people, said Ochwiay Biano, seem always upset, always restlessly looking for something, with the result that their faces are covered with wrinkles. He added that white men must be crazy because they think with their heads, and it is well-known that only crazy people do that. Jung asked in surprise how the Indian thought, to which Ochwiay Biano replied that naturally he thought with his heart.